The federal government has found a new weapon in its war on marijuana — the tax man.

A San Francisco Bay area medical marijuana dispensary that promotes itself as the world's largest has been hit with a $2.4 million tax bill following an audit by the Internal Revenue Service, the dispensary founder said Tuesday.

The back taxes, penalties and interest levied against Harborside Health Center came after the IRS examined its returns for 2007 and 2008 and determined a 1982 tax code prohibiting cost deductions for businesses that traffic in illegal drugs applies to the dispensary.

In just three weeks, gamers deciphered the structure of a key protein in the development of AIDS that has stumped scientists for years.

“Following the failure of a wide range of attempts to solve the crystal structure of M-PMV retroviral protease by molecular replacement, we challenged players of the protein folding game Foldit to produce accurate models of the protein,” the study reads. “Remarkably, Foldit players were able to generate models of sufficient quality for successful molecular replacement and subsequent structure determination. The refined structure provides new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs.”

Just the other week 3 people were banned (1 banned permanently). This week someone was banned for saying, "And you wonder why blacks are still call the n word." Really? That's the bannable offense? If he said, "And you wonder why white people are still called crackers," you think he'd be banned? And who cares if he did say that? Grow thicker skin!

What a bunch of horseshit. Why hasn't anyone stepped up about his ban, I wonder? Maybe because secretly liberalsift doesn't want him to be here, because he's a minority - a conservative?

No wonder some people break furniture on their way out. Can't say I blame them.

"Both parties are controlled by the military industrial complex. We have a system of corporatism where business and governments are partners and rip us off, whether it is the military industrial complex or big drug and insurance companies." ~ Ron Paul

Maria do Carmo Jeronimo, a former slave whose lack of a birth certificate prevented her recognition as the world's oldest woman, has died at the age of 129. Jeronimo died of a stroke late on Wednesday at the University Hospital in Itajuba, 300 km (200 miles) north-west of Rio. Maria do Carmo Jeronimo lived in three centuries

According to church records, Jeronimo was born on 5 March 1871 in the southeastern town of Carmo de Minas, in Minas Gerais state. Brazil then was a monarchy under Emperor Pedro II, and Jeronimo, who was black, was born into slavery. She was 17 when Brazil finally abolished slavery, but never left Minas Gerais.

For six decades she worked as a housemaid for the Guimaraes family, which in recent years tried unsuccessfully to have her recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest woman.

A homeless woman in Connecticut has been arrested for one of the most unthinkable reasons imaginable -- she sent her son to school. Tonya McDowell, 33, was arrested last week and charged with first-degree larceny for stealing $15,686 -- the cost of the public school education for her 6-year-old son.

To make matters worse, the child's babysitter, who provided documentation that said the boy lived at her Norwalk address, was evicted from her public housing unit for her role in his education. McDowell and her son had been bouncing between an acquaintance's home in Bridgeport and a homeless shelter in Norwalk with the boy spending afternoons with the babysitter. The school he attended was in Norwalk School District, which had recently decided to crack down on infiltrators.

Norwalk Mayor Richard Moccia told the Stamford Advocate, "This now sends a message to other parents that may have been living in other towns and registering their kids with phony addresses."